Roswell Park Memorial Institute, Medical On cology, 666 elm Street, Buffalo, New York 14263, USA

Through the years considerable advances have been made, and have been highly publicized in developing curative regimens for acute lymphocytic leukemia. For most large series the probability of a long-term continuous complete remission exceeds 0.5. Equally well publicized have been the less dramatic, but steady advances in the management of adult nonlymphocytic acute leukemias where long-term survivals are reported in 10%-30% of cases, depending both on the rigorousness of treatment and the constraints of eligibility to the study. Surprisingly, relatively little attention has been afforded the good news in the treatment of acute myelocytic leukemias occurring in pediatric patients during this same period. Clearly a child with AML has a harder row to hoe than does his counterpart with ALL. At the same time a few single-institution studies have achieved strikingly good results with these patients (Weinstein, Leventhal) using aggressive chemotherapy, and a not incon.siderable proportion of the successes of allogeneic bone marrow transplantation have depended upon HLAmatched siblings of this younger age group. However, only recently have large controlled trials been conducted and analyzed which employed intensive chemotherapy in childhood AML. The studies presented by Creutzig and her coworkers within the Berlin-Frankfurt-Miinster group are notable examples of the signal advances in pediatric patient management and the outstanding contributions made by West German clinical investigators during the past decade. All students of leukemia have been inspired by the early studies of the treatment of childhood ALL, conducted by pathologists, internists, and even pediatricians in those happy times when an ecumenical spirit of achievement held sway. Today we continue to turn to advanced studies in childhood cancers for those leads which may be used in hematological malignancies of all age groups.

For these several reasons the poster presentation by Creutzig et al. was chosen not only "best of class " but "best of show. "

Edward Henderson
T. A. Lister, K. A. McCreche
The poster awards selection committee